"The default timer resolution on Windows is 15.6 ms - a timer interrupt 64 times a second. When programs increase the timer frequency they increase power consumption and harm battery life. They also waste more compute power than I would ever have expected â€" they make your computer run slower! Because of these problems Microsoft has been telling developers to not increase the timer frequency for years. So how come almost every time I notice that my timer frequency has been raised it's been done by a Microsoft program?" Fascinating article.

If the Windows kernel and its timer are so hard on battery power then why does Windows typically have such a longer life when running on laptop battery power when compared against Linux? Except for a few specialty distros Linux tends to be really hard on battery power compared to Windows.

The primary reason: drivers. For example, the open-source AMD Radeon-drivers do not support power-management at all, yet, and that is obviously going to hurt. Many of the drivers under Linux are reverse-engineered and thus there simply may not be power-management code in there at all whereas under Windows the manufacturers provide the drivers and therefore do not need to reverse-engineer anything. Luckily, atleast the open-source AMD Radeon-drivers are getting power-management soon.

Also, I hear there was a regression in the kernel recently, but that should be fixed by now.